Before we get started on the countdown of Reading’s 10 best dishes – apologies for the delayed start time, by the way, and for keeping you all hanging – I just wanted to say thank you for the fantastic response I’ve had to the series of posts to celebrate 10 years of the blog. I’ve had terrific feedback, some lovely mails, people contacting me to say they’ve made a pilgrimage to check out one of my top 50 dishes, all of the engagement has been marvellous, and very touching. One Reading restaurant who will remain nameless even dropped me a birthday cake, would you believe.

I now plan to celebrate the birthday properly – for the last time, I promise – at the forthcoming ER readers’ lunch and then I’m off on holiday. So you may see a couple of weeks without a post, but I’ll be back before the month is out with new reviews from strange and exotic new places (there’s this town called Swindon, you know – have you heard of it?). Anyway, without further ado here is the top 10. I hope you enjoy it, I hope it contains at least a couple of surprises and I hope it helps you build up a list of places to visit, or reinforces how much you like your own favourites.

10. Pistachio adana, La’De Kitchen

My recent visit to La’De Kitchen established two things in my mind. One was that it wasn’t quite the restaurant it used to be, which is a bit of a pity. But the other was that it still boasted, in the form of its mythical pistachio adana, a dish that on its day could beat almost any other in Reading. It’s a glorious lamb kofte with bulghur wheat and salad, and what used to be a crust of crumbled pistachio has morphed, for the better, into something like a rich, bright green pistachio pesto which renders the very good sublime. Worth the price of admission alone, and worth a journey out to the suburban splendour of Woodley Precinct.

9. Dak-gang jeong, Soju

I raved about this dish back in 2018 when I visited Soju (or The Soju, or whatever it’s called) and I put it on my end of year list. And then, in truth, I forgot about Soju completely: I always had a list of restaurants to review and when I revisited anywhere it was usually one of my cast iron favourites. Somehow, that was never Soju.

Yet when I was putting my long list together, this dish nagged at the corners of my mind. If it was as good as I recalled, it belonged in the 50. But was it as good as I recalled? So Zoë and I went back to Soju about three weeks ago. The restaurant is in the middle of expanding to the room next door and feels a bit like eating in a big empty room rather than eating in a restaurant.

But this list is about dishes, not restaurants, and the Korean fried chicken at Soju isn’t as good as I remember. It’s miles better. It succeeds where Market Place newcomer The Bap fails, because it’s not just bland sweetness but it has the force and complexity of well deployed gochujang. It sings with the stuff, and in truth it’s every bit as good as the sadly departed Gurt Wings’ JFC. I wish I’d had a portion to myself, which isn’t a mistake I’ll make again. With all due respect to my future mother-in-law, a fully paid up member of BTS’s Army (it’s all about Jimin, apparently), this is one of the best things to come out of Korea.

8. Gobi manchurian, Clay’s Kitchen

One to add to the long long list of “Clay’s will ruin other versions of this dish for you”, their gobi Manchurian takes an Indo-Chinese staple and perfects it. The signs were always there that Clay’s was capable of this – back when they did a similar dish with baby corn it converted me, a lifelong baby corn hater, into an ardent fan. But really, this dish is at or near the pinnacle. Just enough sweetness, just enough heat, just enough crunch, just enough firmness in the cauli. 

If get all four of those things absolutely on the money at the same time you’ve created one of the best starters of all time. Simple, you might think: and yet only Clay’s manages all four. Gobi Manchurian elsewhere is either sweet or soggy or off-centre in some other way. If you’ve had it at Clay’s, you’ll notice that when you eat it anywhere else. But then if you have it at Clay’s, you might not bother ordering it anywhere else.

7. Ajika chicken wrap, Geo Café

I have been saying for years that Georgian food is the great undiscovered wonder of world cuisine, and it may be that I pop my clogs before that ever comes to pass. But, possibly uniquely in the U.K., Reading folk already know that because of the tireless efforts of Geo Café.

From street food to pub pop-ups to that residency on the Island, Reading’s weirdest venue, to respectability on Prospect Street, they have always been perfect ambassadors for the food of their home. If you’ve ever been to a supper club and heard owner Keti waxing lyrical about qvevris, wine and walnuts you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.

But even if you haven’t, even if you’ve never nibbled a khachapuri stuffed with gooey, stretchy cheese (or, like me, reheated it in the oven next day and – sacrilege alert – served it with Branston) you may well have had arguably their most revered dish, the ajika chicken wrap. Always chicken thigh, always smothered in ajika, Georgia’s hot, pungent, slightly acrid spiced sauce that expands your palate and horizons with every bite. Always mollified with the claggy comfort of bazhe, Georgia’s walnut sauce, the two components yin and yang in one of the best sandwiches you’ll ever eat.

If you’ve had one, you don’t forget it. If you’ve had one, you’ll have another. And if Geo Café ever pop up with their trailer at a street food event, order this dish there: the chicken coming off a hot grill, charred and indecently good, elevates a great dish still higher.

6. Boneless baby chicken, Bakery House

In the pantheon of Reading dishes, Bakery House’s boneless baby chicken has occupied a rarefied position for many, many years. I have been known to say that it’s the single best plate of food in Reading, the one dish that has everything you need without having to get sides or extras or whistles and bells. Since I revisited and re-reviewed Bakery House not long ago, to check in on it following its acquisition by the owners of House Of Flavours, I have ordered this dish a few times to check whether it is still as it was.

Actually, I did that the first time I went back. After that, I realised it was still exceptional and I ordered it every subsequent time because I loved it. It’s beautifully spiced, beautifully grilled, almost completely boneless and a joy in every single way. Sprinkled with just-squeezed lemon juice and stabbed with a fork, topped with spicy rice or a little of their impeccably dressed salad, dabbed with garlic or chilli sauce it is one of my favourite things to eat in Reading, or anywhere. Full stop, the end.

This piece is going up on Friday, and I had it on Tuesday. What more can I tell you? If Reading’s dishes were listed like buildings, this would be Grade 1.

5. Xinjiang shredded chicken, Kungfu Kitchen

I know what you’re thinking, another chicken dish? This is the last one, I promise. But it couldn’t be more different from the others in this top 10, and I have a particular passion for it which verges on the evangelical. It is, in its way, quite unlike anything else in the top 50.

This dish is cold, shredded chicken, like roast chicken in texture. And all it contains, apart from that, are chillis, cucumber, coriander, sesame seeds and a bright red spiced oil that clings to every nook and cranny of every component. This is a perfect introduction to the dark side of Jo’s menu, to Szechuan pepper that kills you with kindness, that turns up the heat but numbs the tongue so you carry on, as if compelled, until you’ve eaten it all. This dish is a brute. It will hurt you, ever so nicely, and you’ll find you like it. If I say more I’ll turn into one of those tedious food writers who talks about food as if they want to fuck the stuff, so I’ll leave it there.

Zoë can’t eat this dish, she says it triggers her asthma. All the more for me.

4. Deep fried fish in spicy hot pot, Kungfu Kitchen

Speaking of my fiancée, this is her favourite dish in Reading, and if you eat it after the Xinjiang chicken you’ll think it’s the blandest thing going. It’s not, but it’s an equally clever and fascinating set of Szechuan flavours, the deck shuffled and dealt ever so slightly differently. I don’t know how Kungfu Kitchen cooks fish as perfectly as this. It is crisp and craggy outside but inside it is only, only just cooked, soft and pearlescent.

It’s also hotter than the sun, and stays that way for a while when it reaches your table. If you order it along with the lamb with cumin (number 11, if you remember) the trick is to eat the lamb before it cooks through and then descend on the fish when it won’t burn your mouth. But if you have the restraint for that you’re a better human being than me. You’re probably a better human being than me anyway.

This has the same kind of heat as the shredded chicken, but it builds differently and reaches a calmer crescendo. It is, however, no less fascinating. When Zoë was discharged from hospital with Covid, we had a delivery of this the following night. When she devoured the lot, I knew we would be okay.

3. Thhicheko aalu, Kamal’s Kitchen

“You’re giving the number 3 spot to a load of old spuds?” said Zoë when I told her my final rankings. She said that firmly tongue in cheek, but besides she knows how much I love this dish. It was brand new on Kamal’s menu when he opened his new place and, for me at least, it was love at first taste.

These are pressed potatoes, and I’m not entirely sure what that means or how he does it, but they are flattened discs of potato with the perfect crunch and crust outside, the fluffy core within. You can have all the triple-cooked chips in the world, I really don’t care, but just leave me these. They come coated in a spice mix which actually has more in common with KFK’s Szechuan cuisine than you might expect, with that same medicinal numbing effect. I’ve never had a dish like this before, I probably never will again, but every day that Reading residents can walk into a restaurant and eat this is a day to cherish.

2. Chilli beef nachos, The Lyndhurst

At the start of this process, I said that only dishes currently available in Reading were eligible for the list. I said that was harsh on the Lyndhurst, because they change their menu so frequently. And since I started publishing this list, with two dishes by the Lyndhurst on it (beetroot croquettes and chocolate mousse, in case you’ve forgotten), the pub has rewarded me by announcing that they both come off the menu tomorrow to be replaced by something new. You couldn’t make it up.

I am confident they won’t do the same with this dish, because it has been on their menu since day one. It has survived every iteration of the menu, and in fact I had it when I first tried the Lyndhurst’s food, when I visited their new incarnation four years ago to review it. I loved it at the time, although I had some moaning quibble about it being messy. I was talking out of my arse: it’s a stone cold classic and I have enjoyed it many, many times.

I can’t remember if the Lyndhurst makes its own tortilla chips, but it feels like they do. If they don’t, they buy them in superbly. The chilli though, slow-cooked so every strand of beef is in high definition, is all their own work. So is the guacamole they adorn it with. I’ve always said this dish tells you everything you need to know about the Lyndhurst – they make this incredible chilli but just for one dish. They don’t stick it on top of a burger, or lob it on a baked potato, or serve it in its own right just with rice. They make an incredible chilli, day in day out, solely for this dish on the starters section of their menu.

And it’s too good to merely be a starter. You can have it as a starter, or you can have it to share, or you can have it as your main with a pint after a hard day at work, or you could just order it for a group of you because you’re down the pub, and still alive, and it’s a Wednesday. It still costs less than a tenner, which in itself is a bit ludicrous, and it has brought me an awful lot of happiness over four years. When they redecorated the pub recently they missed a trick not putting up a blue plaque.

1. Bhuna venison, Clay’s Kitchen

I don’t know what I can say about this dish that hasn’t already been said, but here goes nothing: when Clay’s launched in the summer of 2018 this was the dish that raised eyebrows, possibly the clearest statement of intent that, when it came to eating Indian food in Reading, you weren’t in Bangladesh any more. A bhuna, but with… venison? 

Clay’s social media, in the build up to their opening, explained that a bhuna was cooked in its juices and so was a drier, thicker curry than the gloopy soup people were used to in Reading, with its heavy reliance on tinned tomatoes and generic garam masala. But how could that work, a dry curry with venison which, for all its many merits, can be on the dry side itself? Well, be that as it may I remember visiting, eating it and thinking “no, they really know what they’re doing”.

And they really, really do. This dish, which has never come off their menu, which was the first name on their team sheet when they put together their Clay’s At Home menu, has become emblematic of Clay’s and its approach to food. Take something your customers think they know, and make it better. Use that stepping stone to introduce your diners to things further and further away from the known until, like climbing a mountain, you can look back and see where you’ve been. Such a beautiful vista! And yet the first step in that magnificent voyage was this dish.

And it really is stunning. I had it recently and it has stood the test of time like few other things (certainly better than I have). It is still rich, still complex, still tender, still poised and balanced. It is simply a class act, and ironically probably the dish – more even so than biryani – people most associate with Clay’s. One of my oldest friends would probably nominate this as his death row dish. His teenage son loves it as much as he does. I like the idea that they’ve bonded through Clay’s beautiful food.

Being lucky enough to know Nandana a little bit, the irony is that I imagine she could have mixed feelings about this dish topping the list. Because as a constant innovator, she is always on to the next thing, the next dish, the next combination of flavours. The idea that the first dish she ever served is the one she is remembered for might frustrate her, like a band with a new album out that is expected to play the hits.

I do have sympathy with that, but sometimes you need to know when you’ve created a classic. The world doesn’t have another song like Yesterday. Reading doesn’t have another dish quite like this venison bhuna.

• Click here for dishes 50-41
• Click here for dishes 40-31
• Click here for dishes 30-21
• Click here for dishes 20-11

This piece is part of Edible Reading at 10. See also:

• The 10 most significant restaurants of the last decade
• The 10 saddest closures of the last decade
• Edible Reading and me